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Cornwallis: Energy East: Our Risk - Their Reward

Monday, October 27, 2014 - 19:00

TransCanada’s Energy East project would be the longest tar sands pipeline in North America. It would ship 1.1 million barrels of oil every day from Alberta to ports in Cacouna, Quebec and Saint John, New Brunswick. Join us to find out why this tar sands pipeline is all risk and little reward for Atlantic Canada.

FREE Public Forum

Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, on protecting our water

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians and chairs the board of Washington-based Food and Water Watch. She is a board member of the San Francisco–based International Forum on Globalization and a Councillor with the Hamburg-based World Future Council.

Maude is the recipient of eleven honorary doctorates as well as many awards, including the 2005 Right Livelihood Award (known as the “Alternative Nobel”), the 2005 Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellowship Award, the Citation of Lifetime Achievement at the 2008 Canadian Environment Awards, the 2009 Earth Day Canada Outstanding Environmental Achievement Award, the 2009 Planet in Focus Eco Hero Award, and the 2011 EarthCare Award, the highest international honour of the Sierra Club (US).

In 2008/2009, she served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the United Nations General Assembly and was a leader in the campaign to have water recognized as a human right by the UN. She is also the author of dozens of reports, as well as 17 books, including her latest, Blue Future: Protecting Water For People And The Planet Forever.

Cherri Foytlin, journalist and speaker, on the health and ecosystem of Gulf Coast communities after the BP oil spill

Cherri Foytlin is a journalist, speaker and mother of six who lives in south Louisiana. She is the author of "Spill It! The Truth About the Deep Water Horizon Oil Rig Explosion," and regularly contributes to www.BridgetheGulfProject.org, the Huffington Post, and several local newspapers. In the Spring of 2011 she walked to Washington D.C. from New Orleans (1,243 miles) to call for action to stop the BP Drilling Disaster, and has been a constant voice speaking out for the health and ecosystem of Gulf Coast communities, in countless forms of media.

Hubert Saulnier, local fisherman and President of Local 9 Maritime Fishermen's Union

Hubert Saulnier has been fishing in the Bay of Fundy since he was 15 years-old and has been working to protect the fishery and the Bay for many years. He is on the recovery team for the North Atlantic right whale and worked to change the traffic lanes for large vessels coming in and out of the Bay to avoid collisions with these endangered mammals. He was also involved with the White’s Cove/Digby Neck quarry proposal, looking at the impacts of large transport vessels on the waters.

Hubert is currently the President of the Maritime Fishermen’s Union and the chair of the committee that manages the groundfish for fixed gear fishermen. He is also on the LFA 34 advisory committee, the Lobster Council of Canada, and the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary.

Atlantic Canadians are being asked to burden the risks that are being rejected by mounting opposition to tar sands pipelines in Western Canada and the U.S.

Jobs: TransCanada has a bad track record on job promises, which will primarily be short-term.

Up to 1 million barrels per day is expected to be exported, unrefined.

It won’t reduce costs at gas pumps or deter companies from shipping oil by rail.

The risks are serious.

Diluted bitumen produced in the tar sands is unlike conventional oil – a spill would have devastating environmental impacts that are nearly impossible to clean up, as seen with the Enbridge pipeline spill in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Energy East would see tankers in the Bay of Fundy double or triple in number, putting the waters depended on for fishing, tourism and whale habitat at risk of a diluted bitumen spill.

The vast majority of the tar sands crude that would be pumped through the Energy East pipeline is for export. We get all the risk, they get all the reward.

The pipeline would result in more than 650,000 barrels per day of additional tar sands production, which means even more toxic exposure for downstream communities.

The increased production would also generate up to 32 million tonnes of carbon emissions each year – more than any single Atlantic province.